Finally, After 24 hours of gruelling flying, I landed on US shores.. i.e literally a 'Shore'.. since California is on the West coastline of US. The journey was as interesting as the destination. After taking off at Hyderabad at 11 pm, a quick 4 hour flight took us to Singapore at around 6.15 am. (Yep.. we lost time...3 hrs here). Singapore Airport was unlike any other airport I had seen earlier. It was like a very big mall / shopping complex, much bigger than anything I had been to in Hyderabad. I was not sure if it was an airport with a shopping complex attached or a shopping complex with an airport attached. Both compliment each other in beauty. We had a quick breakfast at the airport and had to catch the connecting flight to US at 9.15 am. The airport had huge corridoors to connect to various arrival and departure gates. And throughout the length of the corridor were travellators. Travellators are much like elevators, but run thru the length horizontally unlike elivators which run thru the height vertically.
Our next flight was to San Francisco with 1 hr stopover at Seoul. We landed at Seoul at around 4.30 pm their time (Yep.. we lost 3 hrs again.. :-( I was growing old faster). The airport was very clean and the airport staff very efficient and helpful. After we disembarked from the flight, the airport staff guided us to the appropriate gate, gave us clear instructions to the waiting area and embarking gate. None of the passengers were left with a doubt on what to do and where to go. The airport was really well-managed. If you want to see where everything works.. its here. Every light lit...every tile was clean..every tap had water ... every elevator worked.. every signboard was appropriate.. no broken glasses.. no broken tiles.. no broken seats.. no torn canvases.. Only if we could make that happen back home.
The journey next was nonstop 10 hr flight to San Francisco. Seemed a little boring, but then I also watched 3 movies back-2-back. By this time my biological clock was totally screwed up and I ended up having lunch first and breakfast next. We landed at Sanfrancisco shortly after 12 noon (we gained time, this time..). The customs clearance was quick.. there were around 20 clearance stations and within 15 min we were out of the airport. We hired a cab to Townplace Suites, Twin Dolphin Drive. The place was around 20 miles away from airport. The cab driver had no idea where it was and we were lucky to have taken the map downloaded from net. In India, our auto-drivers would know nook and corner of the city. And if its a matter of a big Hotel, like the one above, then it was all the more easier. But here, the cab drivers were totally unaware of routes. Probably they serve much larger area than our guys do.
My journey ended at the Suites. 24 hrs...4 countries..2 continents...and 2 oceans later..jet lag caught up with me...zzzzz..
21 June 2006
12 June 2006
Democracy or Mediocrity
"All men are equal. Some are more so." - Anonymous
Even before I denounce Democracy for its shortcomings, let me start with communism.
"According to Marxism, capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie (the "capitalists", who own and control the means of production). This exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek jobs in order to live. They get hired by a capitalist and work for him, producing some sort of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the capitalist, who sells them and gets a certain amount of money in exchange. One part of the wealth produced is used to pay the workers' wages, while the other part (surplus value) is split between the capitalist's private takings (profit), and the money used to pay rent, buy supplies and renew the forces of production. Thus the capitalist can earn money (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work, or in excess of his own work. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through work; therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. Thus, Marxists argue that capitalists make a profit by exploiting workers." - Wikipedia (Proletariat).
How very logical it seems. But do we realise how irrational and inhuman the above statement is? I say irrational becoz when the the premises are wrong, the inference will be too. There are 2 assumptions here (1) The capitalist does not work or does very little work (2) Any work adds the same value to the end product. Do you see what the capitalists puts in the venture. He puts in his ability to think and create. He is the one who makes the production possible. The new wealth is created by this ability to think. It takes away the credit from the only person who makes the wealth possible.
The second and most inhuman part of this philosophy is the assumption that all men are equal. The community where all its members are equal is a community of brutes. Humans are not equals. I would hate to live in a society where I am an exact copy of billions of others. What would be such a society where you are equal with everybody else. No matter what effort you put in, you would still be equal with others. You could top you class, but still are considered equal. You could invent the most efficient machine man has every built, but you would still be equal to others. You could manage the biggest organization with the best efficiency, but you would still be equal to every junk head around. What is insipration to work in such a society, when no matter how different your productivity is you are considered an equal?
If you still think men are equal..then please read no further. But if you are convinced that men have different abilities, then think for a moment of the injustice we are committing in the name of Democracry. We have the world's largest Democracy. We conduct free and fair elections every once in a while. If Democracy was a perfect system, why is it not working as well as expected? Simply becoz we start with a premise that all men are equal. Our election system is totally flawed. Our leader is simply a person who has the majority of votes. Whoever can convince a majority is a winner. No preference, no weightage, no marks, no special treatment is given to any person. Everybody is so damn equal. There is no difference between a person who thinks and a person who stinks. If you had done an extensive research on every candidate in your constiuency, evaluated each one of their strengths and weaknesses and identified a candidate to vote, your vote is still equal to the first bum who'll vote for first stinking swine who'll offer him a packet of biryani and a bottle of liquor. What is the insipration to think in such an atmosphere?
What ails this country is precisely this. Democracy. Every law you make, every rule you follow should meet with a majority approval, irrespective of whether the majority is informed or misugided. You could tax the minority earners and supply television sets to the majority poor (Mr.Karunanidhi's election promise in 2006 Assembly elections in Tamilnadu). You could deprive the minority General Category to provide education to the majority OBCs (Mr.Arjun Singh raised the reservation limits in insitutes of higher learning in 2006). You could tax the minority salaried class an extra 2% cess to support the education of the majority poor (We still pay this tax). You could tax the minority tax payers to supply free electricity to the majority (poor) farmers (Government of Andhra Pradesh has been providing free electricity to farmers since 2004). Do you know who is the victim in all these cases? Its the hard-working, self-sufficient tax-paying citizen. If a minority is carrying the burden of the majority, then should not the minority have a larger say in the decision making. If your tax is financing the Government expenditure, then does not the Government need your sanction on its expense? If NOT, then we are nothing but bonded labourers toiling for the benefit of some unknown millions. If YES, then we are deprived of our right to decide in this system.
There are things that are right. For instance, if a gang of 10 poor people occupy your house and claim it to be theirs, would you give it to them becoz they are in majority. No ! You know the house is yours. You have the proof for it which can stand in any court of law. And you can chase the gang away thru proper legal force. The law in this case is objective. You know what is right and what is wrong, what is yours and what is not, what is legal and what is illegal. No matter how large the gang is how big their majority is, your property is yours. Without an objective law, civilized society is not possible.
But why cant the same extend to our public administration as well? Why cant we find an objective way to identify the best possible candidate? If there is one reason why we can't do it is probably becoz we are convinced of thinking that Democracy is the best form of Government. Democracy is the best form of Government so far, not any more. We need to think and devise new ways of electing and forming Governments. The existing one will not do. Without a doubt, our Constitution is a great piece of human effort. Our Consitution's founding members have done a magnificient job in creating it. But what good are we as their successors, if we cant better their job? What good are we, If we cant think of new ways and end up following their lead forever and mouthing words of endless gratitude on their effort and never making an effort to reach their stature. Would we be worthy of their succession, if we cant better their system, but continue to screw it up for 50 year nonstop. We need a new constitution and we shud do it ourselves.
Even before I denounce Democracy for its shortcomings, let me start with communism.
"According to Marxism, capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie (the "capitalists", who own and control the means of production). This exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek jobs in order to live. They get hired by a capitalist and work for him, producing some sort of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the capitalist, who sells them and gets a certain amount of money in exchange. One part of the wealth produced is used to pay the workers' wages, while the other part (surplus value) is split between the capitalist's private takings (profit), and the money used to pay rent, buy supplies and renew the forces of production. Thus the capitalist can earn money (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work, or in excess of his own work. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through work; therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. Thus, Marxists argue that capitalists make a profit by exploiting workers." - Wikipedia (Proletariat).
How very logical it seems. But do we realise how irrational and inhuman the above statement is? I say irrational becoz when the the premises are wrong, the inference will be too. There are 2 assumptions here (1) The capitalist does not work or does very little work (2) Any work adds the same value to the end product. Do you see what the capitalists puts in the venture. He puts in his ability to think and create. He is the one who makes the production possible. The new wealth is created by this ability to think. It takes away the credit from the only person who makes the wealth possible.
The second and most inhuman part of this philosophy is the assumption that all men are equal. The community where all its members are equal is a community of brutes. Humans are not equals. I would hate to live in a society where I am an exact copy of billions of others. What would be such a society where you are equal with everybody else. No matter what effort you put in, you would still be equal with others. You could top you class, but still are considered equal. You could invent the most efficient machine man has every built, but you would still be equal to others. You could manage the biggest organization with the best efficiency, but you would still be equal to every junk head around. What is insipration to work in such a society, when no matter how different your productivity is you are considered an equal?
If you still think men are equal..then please read no further. But if you are convinced that men have different abilities, then think for a moment of the injustice we are committing in the name of Democracry. We have the world's largest Democracy. We conduct free and fair elections every once in a while. If Democracy was a perfect system, why is it not working as well as expected? Simply becoz we start with a premise that all men are equal. Our election system is totally flawed. Our leader is simply a person who has the majority of votes. Whoever can convince a majority is a winner. No preference, no weightage, no marks, no special treatment is given to any person. Everybody is so damn equal. There is no difference between a person who thinks and a person who stinks. If you had done an extensive research on every candidate in your constiuency, evaluated each one of their strengths and weaknesses and identified a candidate to vote, your vote is still equal to the first bum who'll vote for first stinking swine who'll offer him a packet of biryani and a bottle of liquor. What is the insipration to think in such an atmosphere?
What ails this country is precisely this. Democracy. Every law you make, every rule you follow should meet with a majority approval, irrespective of whether the majority is informed or misugided. You could tax the minority earners and supply television sets to the majority poor (Mr.Karunanidhi's election promise in 2006 Assembly elections in Tamilnadu). You could deprive the minority General Category to provide education to the majority OBCs (Mr.Arjun Singh raised the reservation limits in insitutes of higher learning in 2006). You could tax the minority salaried class an extra 2% cess to support the education of the majority poor (We still pay this tax). You could tax the minority tax payers to supply free electricity to the majority (poor) farmers (Government of Andhra Pradesh has been providing free electricity to farmers since 2004). Do you know who is the victim in all these cases? Its the hard-working, self-sufficient tax-paying citizen. If a minority is carrying the burden of the majority, then should not the minority have a larger say in the decision making. If your tax is financing the Government expenditure, then does not the Government need your sanction on its expense? If NOT, then we are nothing but bonded labourers toiling for the benefit of some unknown millions. If YES, then we are deprived of our right to decide in this system.
There are things that are right. For instance, if a gang of 10 poor people occupy your house and claim it to be theirs, would you give it to them becoz they are in majority. No ! You know the house is yours. You have the proof for it which can stand in any court of law. And you can chase the gang away thru proper legal force. The law in this case is objective. You know what is right and what is wrong, what is yours and what is not, what is legal and what is illegal. No matter how large the gang is how big their majority is, your property is yours. Without an objective law, civilized society is not possible.
But why cant the same extend to our public administration as well? Why cant we find an objective way to identify the best possible candidate? If there is one reason why we can't do it is probably becoz we are convinced of thinking that Democracy is the best form of Government. Democracy is the best form of Government so far, not any more. We need to think and devise new ways of electing and forming Governments. The existing one will not do. Without a doubt, our Constitution is a great piece of human effort. Our Consitution's founding members have done a magnificient job in creating it. But what good are we as their successors, if we cant better their job? What good are we, If we cant think of new ways and end up following their lead forever and mouthing words of endless gratitude on their effort and never making an effort to reach their stature. Would we be worthy of their succession, if we cant better their system, but continue to screw it up for 50 year nonstop. We need a new constitution and we shud do it ourselves.
05 June 2006
Comedy in Movies
"A joke is all about timing..You miss one and you messed the other."
Humor is one serious business.. very serious indeed.. so serious that a recent statistic yells that almost 80% of the women looking out for a date want a Humorous person. Now I guess you understand how serious it is..Not to be left behind in the chick-race, I tried my hand at humor. Not that I enjoy making fun of every little happening around, but you see, when its a matter of wife and then life..your opinion hardly matters. That's when I realised being funny is not all that funny. I turned to movies for help, and here I found a pattern between jokes and its audience.
Seems like food, Sense of Humor, also has a regional flavour. As much as the content of the joke matters, so does the geography of the audience. My Telugu speaking friends generally like jokes on characterization. They generally enjoy things which exaggerate a persons character or mannerism. Telugu movies also follow this trend, and have a comedy track along these lines, be it gag on a person who's obsessed with 30-day learning courses or a person who's crazy about singing (terribly), a fat person who's intent on eating more and more or a lean guy who gets blown away by wind. They are mostly repetitive, i.e the same dialogue / scene gets repeated regularly and it is this repeatition that aims to be funny. Be it the old Telugu movies which their equivalents of Laurrel and Hardy in Ramana Reddy and Relangi - the later anyday better than the former - or the the more recent movies of Jandhyala or Rajendra Prasad, the comedy is mostly in the style of dialogue delivery and the extreme mannerisms.
My Tamil speaking friends on the otherhand enjoy a different kind of humor.Their humor is mostly quick-witted or plain insulting. Their movies also keep up with them. A lot of those jokes are between 2 people, one making a fool of other. They jokes are usually cleverly-worded and some of their good comedy movies use lot of puns for the fun. Some of their other jokes I heard were like abusing the clown of the show which where downright degrading. If Nagesh's movies (one of my faviourite Tamil comedian) were funny becoz of his antics and timings, today's comedians like Senthil or Vadivel depend on insults to humor, But my Tamil speaking friends enjoyed them. Even when 2 tamilians speak, they usually mince no words in belittling each other, and all in good spirit. And neither of them seems to mind it. But my Telugu speaking friends are taken aback by this and feel that Tamilian humor is crass. And some of my Tamilian friends think that Telugu jokes are overdrawn and repetitive.
Kannada jokes are between these 2 extremes. As their current movies mostly are a rip off from either a Tamil movie or a Telugu one, their comic sense also seems to stem from both. But if you care to watch the older movies, like Ananthnag's movies or the Ganesha series, they have a very subtle kind of humor. Its neither obvious nor absent. If you want an example, watch the "Swamy and Friends" directed by Shankar Nag. It shows the quitessential Kannada Humor. Jokes are not intentionally put, but the lighter vein runs throughout the narrative.
Hindi movies entertain a lot more diverse group than the southern regional films, and so its humor also falls in many categories. Though I am not a fan of Govinda and his high-pitched, loud-mouthed blabbering, there are quite a few who'll laugh at reruns of his movies. Two of Hindi's all time comic hits 'Jaane bhi do yaaron' and 'Andaz Apna Apna' banked of quick-wit and stupidity for humor. And Priyadarshan (HeraPheri / Hulchul) today is remaking old Tamil and Malayalam comedies for that quick buck. Most of today's highly successful Hindi movies are either quick-witted or dumb-witted. But I have seen very few Hindi movies to think of a pattern.
Humor is one serious business.. very serious indeed.. so serious that a recent statistic yells that almost 80% of the women looking out for a date want a Humorous person. Now I guess you understand how serious it is..Not to be left behind in the chick-race, I tried my hand at humor. Not that I enjoy making fun of every little happening around, but you see, when its a matter of wife and then life..your opinion hardly matters. That's when I realised being funny is not all that funny. I turned to movies for help, and here I found a pattern between jokes and its audience.
Seems like food, Sense of Humor, also has a regional flavour. As much as the content of the joke matters, so does the geography of the audience. My Telugu speaking friends generally like jokes on characterization. They generally enjoy things which exaggerate a persons character or mannerism. Telugu movies also follow this trend, and have a comedy track along these lines, be it gag on a person who's obsessed with 30-day learning courses or a person who's crazy about singing (terribly), a fat person who's intent on eating more and more or a lean guy who gets blown away by wind. They are mostly repetitive, i.e the same dialogue / scene gets repeated regularly and it is this repeatition that aims to be funny. Be it the old Telugu movies which their equivalents of Laurrel and Hardy in Ramana Reddy and Relangi - the later anyday better than the former - or the the more recent movies of Jandhyala or Rajendra Prasad, the comedy is mostly in the style of dialogue delivery and the extreme mannerisms.
My Tamil speaking friends on the otherhand enjoy a different kind of humor.Their humor is mostly quick-witted or plain insulting. Their movies also keep up with them. A lot of those jokes are between 2 people, one making a fool of other. They jokes are usually cleverly-worded and some of their good comedy movies use lot of puns for the fun. Some of their other jokes I heard were like abusing the clown of the show which where downright degrading. If Nagesh's movies (one of my faviourite Tamil comedian) were funny becoz of his antics and timings, today's comedians like Senthil or Vadivel depend on insults to humor, But my Tamil speaking friends enjoyed them. Even when 2 tamilians speak, they usually mince no words in belittling each other, and all in good spirit. And neither of them seems to mind it. But my Telugu speaking friends are taken aback by this and feel that Tamilian humor is crass. And some of my Tamilian friends think that Telugu jokes are overdrawn and repetitive.
Kannada jokes are between these 2 extremes. As their current movies mostly are a rip off from either a Tamil movie or a Telugu one, their comic sense also seems to stem from both. But if you care to watch the older movies, like Ananthnag's movies or the Ganesha series, they have a very subtle kind of humor. Its neither obvious nor absent. If you want an example, watch the "Swamy and Friends" directed by Shankar Nag. It shows the quitessential Kannada Humor. Jokes are not intentionally put, but the lighter vein runs throughout the narrative.
Hindi movies entertain a lot more diverse group than the southern regional films, and so its humor also falls in many categories. Though I am not a fan of Govinda and his high-pitched, loud-mouthed blabbering, there are quite a few who'll laugh at reruns of his movies. Two of Hindi's all time comic hits 'Jaane bhi do yaaron' and 'Andaz Apna Apna' banked of quick-wit and stupidity for humor. And Priyadarshan (HeraPheri / Hulchul) today is remaking old Tamil and Malayalam comedies for that quick buck. Most of today's highly successful Hindi movies are either quick-witted or dumb-witted. But I have seen very few Hindi movies to think of a pattern.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)